Sacramento campus is a model for combining vocational education with high-level academics
Sacramento Bee 2/24/07
Nearly 100 legislative staffers, education researchers, university admissions officers and business leaders descended on Arthur Benjamin Health Professions High School to view what's become a model for combining occupational with high-level academic education.
Everything students learn in this Sacramento City Unified school, which opened in 2005 with 150 students, is organized around the theme of health care.
In algebra class, the experts saw students calculate proper doses of medicine for a child. In Spanish class, they heard a discussion of herbal remedies. In biology, they observed teenagers with microscopes checking whether bacteria grow more in water, alcohol or hand sanitizer.
Momentum has been building around the "multiple pathways" approach, which calls for more work preparation for academically strong students, as well as better academic education for students who in the past might have been pushed toward vocational ed.
Rather than steering students toward college or work, high schools should prepare all students for both, according to proponents.
One of them is Gary Hoachlander, president of ConnectEd: The California Center for College and Career. Surrounded by green and blue balloons in the multipurpose room at Health Professions High on Wednesday morning, Hoachlander addressed the crowd with the enthusiasm of a politician declaring victory.
The key to improving high schools lies in "breaking down that separation between academic and technical that has existed for the last century," Hoachlander said.
State leaders have backed the idea with proposals to boost spending on career technical education, bills to increase college-prep offerings, and new curriculum guidelines that spell out the kinds of occupational training California schools should offer.
The movement is building locally, too. Education and business leaders in greater Sacramento have begun crafting a regionwide plan for career technical education. The goal is to meet the needs of the region's economy.
But instead of each district working independently -- with a high risk of duplication -- school districts and colleges in six counties are being urged to plan together.
The energy building around this new vision is supported by a recent study that calls multiple pathways a promising approach. Education researchers at UCLA found that the technique benefits the economy, engages students and improves graduation rates.
But it could present challenges too, they found. Students could be tracked into occupations based on race or income. The structure of education could change without improvements in its substance.
And the report warns of a "powerful resistance to changing the status quo."
Schools with strong academics may fear their programs will be watered down, said Jeannie Oakes, author of the UCLA study. Vocational education advocates may fear that "students they've served historically will be set up for failure."
Said Oakes: "I don't think either of these concerns is warranted, but it's helpful to be watchful that neither of those things happen."
There's also no good count of how many of the state's 1,100 high schools already blend occupational training and rigorous academics, Oakes said.
Structural changes, in any case, have become trendy. Many districts nationwide, including Sacramento City Unified, have broken large high schools into small schools-within-a-school with specific themes, such as law and public service, or arts and media. The idea is to create more intimate learning environments.
Such changes do not go far enough, according to W. Norton Grubb, an education professor at UC Berkeley who contributed to the UCLA report.
"A number of issues plague high schools that restructuring alone cannot resolve, including problems related to the quality of instruction, equity (and) student orientation toward the future," Grubb wrote.
Instead, he says, restructuring should include changing the attitudes of teachers and students about life after high school.
Both the challenges and the promises of blending work prep with college prep were evident at Health Professions High School, a gleaming campus across the street from a Seavey Circle public housing complex.
The school includes only freshmen and sophomores in its second year of operation. Students come from around the region, with 65 percent living in low-income households.
Initial test scores show that getting these students to college will take a lot of work: 49 percent were at grade level in English last year and 10 percent were at grade level in math.
But the school now offers extra support in those subjects to help students meet their new career goals.
At Health Professions High, students introduce themselves first by name, and then with their dream career: pediatrician, statistician, coroner, veterinarian, nurse and neurosurgeon.